Exploring Maternal Emotion Masking as a Contribution to Kindergartener's Emotion Regulation
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Parents socialize their child's emotion regulation and expression through reactions and responses to, as well as discussion of, emotions during early childhood, around the same time children begin to express their thoughts and feelings verbally.The study of maternal emotion masking, or purposefully hiding an emotional expression, has produced mixed results regarding children's emotion regulation.The current study examines maternal reports of children's emotion regulation and mother's use of monitoring and masking of emotions in relation to children's expressive vocabulary during a story-telling task.Twenty-six mother-child dyads were recruited to engage in a story-telling task to examine children's use of internal state language; mothers also completed questionnaires including the Emotion Regulation Checklist, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, and the Parent Interview on Caregiving Infants.Children's expressive vocabulary was additionally assessed using the Expressive Vocabulary Test, 2 nd Edition.Results suggest that mothers' emotion monitoring relates to children's greater use of emotion regulation and use of more positive words during story-telling.Mothers also differed in their use of emotion masking and monitoring by annual income and education level, which could be related to differences in high-versus low-income stressors including more rigorous job demands.Future interventions should explore the effects of maternal emotion masking for parents who experience high stress levels. Exploring Maternal Emotion Masking as a Contribution to Kindergartener's Emotion RegulationEmotions allow individuals to organize their actions after an event and provide a means of relaying the individuals' needs or intentions to others (Cole et al., 2006).Through guidance from parents, by age 4 or 5 children understand that their environment changes their emotional experiences and subsequent behavior (e.g.children may cry when getting dropped off for their first day of school, or children may become frustrated when told to stand in the corner of a room for time-out; Lazarus, 2005).Additionally, children learn from experiences with their parents and other family members (e.g.siblings) to exhibit different emotional expressions based on gender stereotypes (Brody, 2000;Chaplin, Cole, & Zahn-Waxler, 2005;Chaplin, Casey, Sinha, & Mayes, 2010;McIntyre & Edwards, 2009).Children at this age also realize that expectations and beliefs play a role in how emotions are expressed, and recognize and appreciate that expression of emotions can be controlled (Lazarus, 2005;Gosselin, Warren, & Diotte, 2002).The focus of this study was to examine how parents support young children's developing effortful control, or their ability to manage attention and adapt to a situation by inhibiting or activating their behavior accordingly (Rothbart & Bates, 2006).One way that children learn about effortful control is through observing parents' use of emotion regulation, or their ability to manage their expression of emotions (Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Eggum, 2010).This study approaches this topic by exploring mothers' intentional use of emotion regulation strategies, specifically focusing on one explicit strategy: emotion masking.
Author: Erin Donohue
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2472914709